"Technical entrepreneur." Yeah, right

I like cars. I like cars a lot. Over the years, the fact that I like cars has caused me to make some really bad financial decisions. I don't care. I still like cars.

This is why I'm so interested in one of my semi-neighbors. Why a semi-neighbor? Because he paid more than $350,000 for the average suburban house across the street from me in my average suburban subdivision. He doesn't live there. Neither does anybody else. He just parks his cars there. Two in the garage, three in the driveway.

But these aren't just cars. We're not talking about Tauruses and Camrys, or even Camaros and Mustangs. Here's the current roster:

-- Aston Martin DB9
-- Maserati Quattroporte
-- Chevrolet Corvette Z06
-- Jaguar XK-R
-- Jaguar X-Type

You added correctly: That's more than $450,000 worth of cars parked across the street from me.

They're all his; they have actual license plates on them, not dealer plates or temp tags or anything. The 'Vette and the Aston Martin usually live in the garage; the Jags and the Maserati are parked outside, with covers. The Maserati's alarm has been intermittently going off all morning. We're not sure why.

The guy is a nice enough older fellow, late 50s probably, tall, an ex-Marine who is now, as he puts it, "a technical entrepreneur of sorts." I'm fairly certain that's neighborhood-ese for "Internet pornographer." Occasionally, you'll find his teenage son or early-20s daughter in the driveway, shining the wheels on the Maserati or one of the Jags. (The daughter drives a late-'90s Cavalier, by the way.) He lives in another house elsewhere in our neighborhood with his wife. He occasionally comes to his car-house to "watch TV so it doesn't bother the wife."

Oh, and none of these cars is his primary transportation; he has a Dodge Durango for that. He drives the Aston Martin every two weeks, "whether I want to or not," he says, because the battery has a tendency to run down if he doesn't.

"I like cars," he said to me one Sunday afternoon. He even went out of his way to compliment my car, a car that would be distinguished in just about every field other than his driveway. I was somewhat honored, actually.

When I grow up, I want to be a "technical entrepreneur of sorts."